


the lights are on (but nobody's home)

by ShippingEverything



Series: his royal highness prince calroy rocks [6]
Category: Dimension 20 (Web Series)
Genre: 5 Times, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Introspection, M/M, Prince Consort Calroy, Statues, he's drunk in one (1) of these so alcohol ment jic, he's mostly talking to himself here folks, is it venting if you're talking at statues of your husbands dead sisters?, venting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-10
Updated: 2020-08-10
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:34:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25820686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShippingEverything/pseuds/ShippingEverything
Summary: “Hey, Cal,” Amethar says, voice so much quieter and smaller than it normally is. He looks smaller too, on his knees before four massive statues. He is, literally, in the shadows of his sisters.“Amethar,” Calroy says again. He pauses, unsure what thought to start with.When did this happen, Amethar? Why are they so big, Amethar? What the fuck, Amethar?“What is all of this?”or: sometimes you just need to chat with some statues
Relationships: Calroy Cruller & The Rocks Sisters, Calroy Cruller/Amethar Rocks
Series: his royal highness prince calroy rocks [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1798678
Comments: 14
Kudos: 51





	the lights are on (but nobody's home)

**Author's Note:**

> hi friends, its 3:30 am and ive been working on this fic for a week and a half. PLEASE enjoy it. alcohol tw for the second scene (labeled 1.), bc calroy is drunk and drinking during it, lmk if you want a summary
> 
> anyway, please enjoy this fic of Four Times Calroy Went To Go Talk To The Statues, because i made a joke on twitter once and really liked the concept
> 
> title from linkin park's talking to myself

0.

Calroy stops in front of a room he’s never been inside -- there is not much of Castle Candy that Calroy doesn’t know by now, but this is a part of the castle that was destroyed during the war and rebuilt by Amethar. He sighs, deeply, and pushes open the door. “Amethar? Are you in here? I- _oh_.”

“Hey, Cal,” Amethar says, voice so much quieter and smaller than it normally is. He looks smaller too, on his knees before four massive statues. He is, literally, in the shadows of his sisters.

“Amethar,” Calroy says again. He pauses, unsure what thought to start with. _When did this happen, Amethar? Why are they so big, Amethar? What the fuck, Amethar?_ “What is all of this?”

“There was this sculptor at Rococoa’s funeral. He asked me if he could make a statue for her in Dulcington and I-”

Amethar cuts himself off and wetly clears his throat. Calroy steps forward, warily eyeing the statues. “And you commissioned him to make you these,” He finishes. Amethar nods weakly and Calroy continues, “Do you come here often?”

“Not all the time, I couldn’t, but sometimes…” Amethar laughs humorlessly, “You know, none of us were any good at listening when- before, I mean. Maybe Citrina was, sort of, but even she was a Rocks to the core; we used to yell right over each other all the time, talking _at_ instead of _to_ , it drove my dad crazy. Is it weird that it feels good to come here and think that, maybe, wherever they are, they’re listening?”

“No,” Calroy says, reflexively. He cranes his neck to look at the looming sisters, the blank-faced visages that Amethar draws solace from. He squeezes Amethar’s shoulder and Amethar leans into it like a red vine towards the sun, completely a man who will take comfort from any offered venue. “I think I understand.”

* * *

1.

Calroy crashes into the doorframe of the chapel _hard_ as he tries to enter, rum splashing out of his goblet.

“My apologies,” He says, automatic, though there is no one there. No one in this cold, empty chapel, except for Calroy and-

And-

And the _statues_.

Calroy spins around unsteadily, narrows his eyes up and up until he sees _her_ , the _great_ Archmage Lazuli.

“ _Lazuli Rocks_. The powerful, wonderful Princess Lazuli, so brave, so smart, so _selfless_ ,” He snarls. His rum spills again as he steps forward so he takes a large swig to lower its liquid level. “You sent me a letter once, in one of Amethar’s letters, the way you _always did_ , about one of my plans. You told me to change my supply route or else it’d get intercepted.”

Even in statue form, Lazuli gets on Calroy’s nerves; she always seemed so knowledgable and above it all, but she still found time to dip her busybody fingers into everything. Calroy had gotten that message and immediately burned it, infuriated and believing that she was trying to trick him or that she had sold him out. The weapons had been intercepted, as she predicted, and not even by Candian forces; some _Vegetanians_ caught them, by chance, and Calroy had lost out on a payday because of it.

“Why would you let me get away with that? If you knew so much, could see so much, why would you let me befriend your brother? Why didn’t you warn Rococoa? Is this what you foresaw, Lazuli? Me, in your castle, and you a _statue_.” Calroy snorts derisively and takes another swig. The rum burns all the way down as he watches the statue, impassive and infuriating. Suddenly he can’t stand to be there anymore, under her judging eyes. He turns on his heel and walks as steadily and quickly as he can to the door. In the hall, he drains the rest of his goblet and leans against the wall.

“Amethar was wrong,” He mutters, allowing himself a rare true frown, “This didn’t make me feel _any_ better.”

* * *

2.

“She still misses you, you know.”

Calroy sits against the yellow pedestal, taps his fingers against his thigh. It’s late, late enough that Calroy doesn’t know the time exactly, and he’s sure he’ll pay for his lack of sleep tomorrow, but for now, he can’t sleep and felt drawn to Amethar’s little shrine, to her _Holiness_ Saint Citrina.

“Not that she’d admit it, not that _I’d_ ever ask, but there are little ways to tell,” He says, looking out into the darkness of the chapel rather than up into the statue’s cold eyes. His tone twists conspiratorial as he continues, “Did you know she won’t let Amethar have any of your things? The Pontifex says they’re _‘relics of the church,’_ like we’re not only a year out from the war.”

Calroy snorts and it echoes in the cavernous space. He tilts his head up and sees Citrina, kind Citrina, carved with an uncharacteristically solemn expression. Calroy remembers that she visited her brother at the Front exactly once, but still made a point to include a book for him to share with his “little friend” in each package she sent from then until her death. Calroy still has some of those books, the ones that didn’t get ruined with rain or bloodshed.

He doesn’t read them anymore.

“I don’t know what you did to make her think she had to kill you but-” Calroy presses a hand heavily into his eyes. Belizabeth isn’t the only one who misses Citrina, it seems. “I just wish you were a little less smart. Or maybe that you were smarter, that a single one of you could see beyond the scope of _yourself_ and understand. Did you have to be so _virtuous_?”

There’s no answer, of course. Calroy sighs and leans back, shutting his eyes. Citrina was always so kind to him, he’s sure she wouldn’t mind him resting his eyes for a bit.

* * *

3.

“I’m getting married,” Calroy says. The words don’t fit right in his mouth, don’t sound like anything he ever thought he’d say, and it feels like pushing on a bruise when he confesses, “I didn’t think I ever would, and especially not to someone like your brother. You probably would’ve stopped him if you were here.”

The statue doesn’t resemble Sapphria as Calroy knew her; he thinks the sculptor based his design off an official portrait because the translucent stone before him doesn’t have the smirk that Calroy remembers her with, doesn’t hold any mischief in her features, doesn’t look anything but sweet and unassuming. Then again, maybe she did look like this when she was at peace and around people she liked; Bulb knows that she made it clear that she didn’t like Calroy.

“I didn’t even plan this,” He tells her, not quite apologizing but not bragging either, which is the best he can offer her. Calroy is a planner, he’s always running calculations and he likes to have set goals and strategies, but Amethar has always, without fail, destroyed all of his plans. It shouldn’t be a surprise that he’s crushed another of Calroy’s conceptions of self, that he swept in like a whirlwind with his courtship offer and his letters and his kisses, that he wants to _marry_ Calroy, officially, ceremonially, publicly. Calroy is twisting at the ring on his thumb before he can stop himself, a recently developed tick that he has to train himself out of. It only happens when he’s thinking about Amethar and it’s far too easy a tell.

“You would be furious, I think, if you saw the way he acts sometimes. No talent for discretion. He says whatever he wants and he _means it_ , the way that normal people never do, he just believes in it all so wholeheartedly, so _foolishly_ -” Calroy cuts himself off. He’s messing with the ring again. He forces his hands into his pockets as he takes a deep breath. “I didn’t plan this, but he’ll be safer with me than without. You’d understand that; someone as stupid and genuine as him _needs_ someone in the background pulling the strings he wouldn’t think of. I wouldn’t lie to you and say I’ll _protect him_ or anything like that, but I’ll...”

Calroy sighs. He still has his plans, he still gets letters from newly elected Senator Ciabatta and the Pontifex, he’s still willing to trade that ridiculous man for his own power. None of that has changed, no matter the Amethar-caused destruction in his careful machinations. Princess Sapphria Rocks, a spy so good that her own Kingdom still doesn’t know all she did for them, smiles down at him, understanding and kind. She would never have looked at him like that in life.

“I’ll make sure that I’m the one who takes him down. I can at least give him that dignity.”

* * *

4.

Calroy leaves his guard in the hall. He’s not supposed to go anywhere alone, he’s been told it’s not safe, but Calroy’s heard the rumors, knows people think he’s losing his mind; the last thing he needs is his guard gossiping that he talks to ghosts.

He stands at parade rest in front of Rococoa’s statue, as rich in color as she was in life, and waits thirty seconds almost by habit; during the war, Rococoa always needed thirty seconds to change mental tracks. If you needed a paper signed, if you had a strategy to introduce, if you were simply a mail carrier, you’d have to wait thirty seconds for her to collect and redirect herself.

Calroy remembers when she caught him with the Ceresians, how the friendly words and smile had frozen on her face for near a minute; pure, still shock incarnate. When she fell into motion again, her rage was incandescent. The Ceresians Calroy was with barely took Rococoa _fifteen_ seconds to finish off, and then she turned to Calroy, snarling and furious, and demanded to know what he was doing.

“It’s ridiculous that you even asked,” Calroy says, now, looking up at her. “You knew. I mean, you caught me giving Ceresians weapons, hand to hand, there’s not much else that could mean. But you asked anyway. What did you want? An explanation? A lie? Did you really want to believe that I was better?”

He hadn’t had anything to tell her, couldn’t think on his feet fast enough to make something up. She’d told him that she’d have him quartered, that he’d get a _trial_ in Candia, as if any of that would matter. Luckily, her lecture had been interrupted with news of the Ceresians fully closing in, and after that it was easy for him to set up her death. He wonders if she ever thought that he’d do something like that, if she really thought that he’d be happy rotting the rest of his life in the Rocks dungeons after a farce of a trial, but it doesn’t matter now.

Now, he is the last Rocks in Castle Candy, he’s invited Ceresians and Vegetanians into their land, he pushed his husband from the highest parapet.

“I won,” He says, “I did it, finally, everything I’ve been working towards for _twenty years_. I _won_ -”

The words echo. He doesn’t say anything else, doesn’t complete the thought, doesn’t ask _why does it feel like I lost?_ There are no answers to be had here, he knows. This chapel is empty, just Calroy and the statues, as it has always been.

Calroy is alone.

**Author's Note:**

> i hope you enjoyed! the only note i have for this fic is "very funny that sapph is the only rocks sister who didnt like calroy seeing as lazuli Literally could see into the future." 
> 
> comments, kudos, etc Fuel my heart and soul, thank you so much Generally for reading!!!!
> 
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